There is another festival held, not unlike the ones in the summer or winter and spring. The citizens gather by the town square to watch the main act of the show, enraptured by the necessary and undestructive. As a matter of fact, this would have removed the destruction. Perhaps some feel disgust and anger, yet they all know the revival of their crumbling city depends on this sacrifice’s misery. Upon the center stage, waiting in the wings, is a young boy beneath a blade.

The child pushes forward against the crowd and stands by him, pleading for his release. Nobody dares to put them back into the cage they once lived in, too full of pity for what should have been their tragedy. The citizens of Querencia may have known compassion, but what they know best is fear and their own happiness.

The boy escapes, fears letting the child be marred by his death even after having long since given up. They run through the shattered streets, away from their cage and what should have been home.

They do not walk straight out of the city. They do not walk out at all. When the boy falls, unmoving, the child succumbs with them. The child, who had been trapped for half their life and experienced happiness by the boy’s hand, could not have possibly imagined a place beyond sunlight and darkness.

The path out is never easy. Those who disapproved questioned the children who listened to their tales, much too young to understand what their words ever implied, and deemed them guilty. After all, they were instilling rebellion in their minds, giving them hope in a hopeless world.

When they refuse to open his mouth, a warning is carved on their lips for all to behold. Resolved, they do not heed caution. They do not have anything to lose, never had anything to lose but themselves.

With their pain grew the aspirations of thousands, a longing for the new. With the stories grew the dreamer’s dreams. The others seize them once again, hitting them out of the air and pushing sharp silver onto their wings. They run, yanking themself away from the grip on their other wing, a last act of defiance. Between the pocket of finite and infinite, time and space, life and death itself, they jump into the nonexistent.

The void tears and it strips. They are broken down and reconstructed in mere milliseconds, the bare minimum of consciousness lingering. Sometime in the middle of eternity and not, their halo shatters. They cry out to an empty audience and plead to see the sun once again.

Then, it ends, and the world wakes up to them.

Very rough draft. Twelve is immediately established as the deuteragonist the moment they meet MC. However, they are no longer able to enter the “limbo” of the second arc independently: once they die in this world, it is final. Such is the cost of escaping. Do they care? Not really, but then again “limbo” was the only thing preventing them from dying when they clearly should have.

Here's the catch. MC's story will never be an independent one. It will never be complete on its own, because twelve is the key to even finishing the character arc. due to this, mc is eligible to enter “limbo” where finished-unfinished stories go as well, yet another anomaly, a sort of chicken-and-egg situation. Essentially, if he dies, since Twelve is always doomed to perish before him, MC will get sent to limbo. His arc ends.

Here's another catch. All main characters will be sent to “limbo” as long as they are unable to move and their arc remains unfinished, almost like stalemate. Twelve is dead or on the brink of death. MC, purposely trapping himself in induced unconsciousness, now allows for Twelve to return to limbo with him, while neither of them are truly dead in the real world.

They run on more borrowed time, forcing an ending that never should have been. Then again, are impossibilities truly just that? It ends just as it always has and always will, but this time, there will be a proper farewell.